Friday, March 26, 2010

Thrush (Tea Tree for Me!!)

Lately the word on the street has been thrush. It's all over everywhere- listserves, message boards, product advertisements and billboards. Ok, maybe not on bill boards but for horse owners who obsess over natural horse care, it is a big deal. Mostly I really just go with the flow about these sorts of things.

You can't really change too much of the environment, which is a large part of the problem, so I tend to look for solutions to help without breaking the bank, having to do treatments three times a day or bug my horses so badly they start hiding from me when they hear my truck.

We have had an interesting winter in that the normal period of deep freeze was substantially short. As in, like, a week. We usually go months and months with rock-hard frozen ground, which causes its own set of problems. Instead, this year, we got the pleasure of tediously slogging through a foot of wet, stinky, sticky mud. Mud is gross. I hate it.

I took to hosing off my ponies feet everyday just to make sure there were feet under that disgusting layer of grossness. I sneered when my snowbird and southwestern friends called to complain about the "freezing," i.e., 60 degree days, and the "horrible rain." They forget to remember that not only where we dealing with REAL freezing temps, but lots of rain, snow, wind and all things winter. Otherwise known as torture to me. Ask anyone, I *really* need my vitamin D!

If it wasn't for the Rambo, Khopy would have been covered head to toe with the yucky stuff!

About a month ago when I started legging up my endurance horse, I noticed that she was obviously tender in the central sulcus when I tried to clean her foot out prior to putting on her Gloves. I knew thrush had to be the culprit for that soreness, as her sulcus was super deep and her frogs were deteriorating from the wet mushy slop she called